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Wednesday, 31 July 2013

Rising interest in CLIPPERS

One way of measuring how interested the scientific community is in CLIPPERS is to look at the number of CLIPPERS papers which have been published in medical journals. To get a paper describing a study published, it has to be deemed appropriate for the readership of the journal (i.e. you don't usually see papers about liver disease in neurology journals), to show evidence of novelty or a contribution to knowledge, and to demonstrate that the work has been carried out to commonly acknowledged scientific standards.

A related measure for each paper, which many people get obsessed by, is how many times that paper was referred to by other papers - the number of citations. A paper which generates a lot of interest will generally be referred to (cited) by many other papers in the future. So although it is early days, what can we deduce about CLIPPERS by looking at the number of papers published each year, and the number of citations of these papers.

Number of papers published per year

The first graph shows the number of papers published about CLIPPERS in each of the last four years. The numbers are relatively small, but they are rising. A list of most of these papers can be found here.

Number of CLIPPERS citations per year

The second graph shows the number of times the papers have been referred to (cited). Of course, often the later CLIPPERS papers are citing the earlier ones, but occasionally other papers in neurology refer to CLIPPERS too. The single most cited paper is the original one from Prof. Pittock at the Mayo Clinic. Coincidentally, I managed to speak with Prof. Pittock recently and hope to report some outcomes from that conversation quite soon. Watch this space.